Kinetic Void

New Galaxy RequiredAll Weapon Modules have been removed from all ships and will need to be re-installedAdded

Main Menu

Starter ship: In new Career Mode galaxy, the player gets a list of pre-built ships to start with instead of a random set of parts. Starter ships are determined by which ship files are present within SaveFiles/Starter. Ships in this folder are loaded on first run, but are never saved over.

Weapon

8 new hardpoint/weapon mounts added. These are animated and require an activation time when engaging an enemy. They deactivate on their own after a certain amount of time without a target.

25 new weapons have been added as subsystems for new hardpoint system. Each weapon has unique stats and behaviour. This is an ongoing effort and will be updated as development continues for gameplay/balance.

UPPER LEFT: In sector, added a Selected Object Information Panel with the following info:

Distance

Selected Object’s:

Name

Icon

Classification

Faction

Faction Hostility towards player

Image of Object

UPPER RIGHT CORNER: Target Lock Indicator(s) with the following info:

Distance

Faction Hostility towards player

Health Bar

Shield Bar

Weapon Groups Assigned

Tooltip text is available on hover.

Locking onto targets now has a delay based on Sensor Speed. “Acquiring Target Lock” displays until lock is complete, and the blue selection bracket will fade over to the red locked bracket.

Selected Locked Target now has an animation to indicate which target is selected.

Maximum lock targets is now based off the Sensor stats.

Warp Gate System: Use warp gates (designated in specific sectors) to travel to other star systems. Each has a specific destination within each star system. The Warp Gate Icon is always visible, regardless of your distance from it. Approach the Warp Gate, enter the gate and a menu will appear on the right, giving you the choice to warp to the Sector listed. If the gate has multiple destinations, you can use the drop down menu (click the Sector name) to select which Sector to travel to. This is currently the only way to move between Star Systems. The Sector warping on the map will only work for Sectors in your current Star System.

When warping to another sector or star system there is now an actual effect instead of just loading the new sector. When using a warp gate, the ship will enter being warping once the player uses the warp menu to initiate it. When warping to another sector from the map, the map will close and the ship will align to face the destination sector before entering warp. This alignment phase is identical to using the align or warp to function, and as with those cases, user input will interrupt the process and return control to the player.

New AI behavior: Small ships can now turn off their drag and face another direction while shooting.

Changed

Shipyard Changes

Ship names may now have spaces or underscores_ in them.

Changed Engine Subsystems so that the Engine Module can only hold a single Engine Subsystem, but still can hold multiple Boosters.

Removed old weapon models. Note: All stock ships have been updated for the new weapon systems

Weapon Manager has been updated. Weapons will default to Weapon Group 1 and Manual, as well as their default weapon type. Left clicking on weapon name will highlight that weapon blue and set the camera’s pivot point to the weapon, right clicking on the weapon name will open the Subsystem Manager for that module. Hovering over the weapon name will display weapon stats in a tooltip if the weapon has a Subsystem applied to it.

Added a toggle for animated weapons in the shipyard manager, this will toggle all weapons with an activation/deactivation animation. Weapons will reset upon closing the Weapon Manager

Moved the Hanger Manager Window to the right side of the screen and stacked the window. The ship will be more visible without the manger window over top giving a better view of which hangar bay you have selected.

Sector/Game Changes

Upon creating a new game, the game will start the player in a non-hostile sector, not just the first sector it finds with a station.

When choosing which ship to spawn, the AI will prefer ships closer in size to the player’s ship. Larger ships may still spawn, but this will hopefully provide a reasonable difficulty curve in campaign mode. Ships with an extreme module count will be penalized in the spawn chance calculation and spawn more rarely.

Ships that spawn upon loading into a sector will typically belong to the faction that owns the Sector. Loading in to find a group of hostile ships should only happen in hostile Sectors (but will be more likely than before if you are in a hostile sector).

The Station Docking prompt is now a slide out menu (like the new warp prompt.)

The Planetary Warning has been repositioned the lower left corner of the screen (rather than centered)

When selecting an object out in space the icon will now move to the lower right hand side of the selection/target bracket so that the object is visible.

Map Changes

The right click menu on the map now always appears centered, instead of over the mouse position when you clicked.

The map’s right click menu has been changed. When you click on a sector in the list, instead of immediately warping, a new menu element appears to the right to display information about warping to that sector. If the player can warp there, the big red button will initiate warp. If the player is already in that Sector, or the Sector is in another star System, the button will be grayed out and text below the button will explain why it is disabled. The information panel in the upper left displays what warp connections, if any, that sector has.

We have updated our GUI middleware to its latest version. This will hopefully resolve some minor bugs (such as render depth issues). GUI assets, especially text, should be noticeably improved in appearance.

Armor plating is now more effective at preventing engine damage.

Kinetic Ammo - Reduced the cost and increased the quantity purchased.

Fixed

Shipyard

Shipyard will no longer set ship names to all lower case when you load into the scene. If you have ships that have been renamed to lower case, rename them once with the desired capitalization and it should stick now.

Sector

Bug where Laser beam sounds would cut out after a while.

Bug where Target Out of Range would stay on locked target after target was clearly in range.

Bug where Out of Ammo turrets were able to attempt to fire causing performance issues.

Enemies the player attacks with manual fire will now become hostile to the player. Ships will use a 3 strikes policy before attacking.

Issue where weapon fire spread was not calculated correctly when in manual fire.

Issue where the align functionality would do nothing if the target to align to was exactly behind the ship.

Bug where Tab and Z would not cycle to the correct target.

Bug that would allow the sun to shine through planets.

Bug where the Drone Management button would be visible when the ship did not have any drone capacity.

The latest and greatest Kinetic Void Development Patch is available for your gaming pleasure! If you'd like to download the Development Patch D11, you may read the Instructions for Getting the Development Patch. Notes from this development patch may be found here.
If you come across anything odd, please either post it in the forum above or the Beta Patch Notes subforum. ːkvː

Added Hardpoint/Subsystem Weapons system - Turrets (Hardpoint) and Weapons (subsystems) have been split into two systems. The turret (hardpoint) will have how far the turret can reach in an arch as well as how fast. You then will equip a Weapon (subsystem) to it to dictate what type of weapon it is and what type of damage it will do. Old Weapons(non-hardpoints) will have a “base” value set to them for their damage type. It is advised that all users begin swapping out old turrets for the new hardpoint systems. Older turrets will be phased out as we add more replacement weapon systems.

Ammunition Resources, three types currently. (Only available in the store. Remember to move from Station Inventory to your Ship Inventory after you purchase if from the store. When you purchase items from the store they just go to your Station Storage, not to your Ship Storage)

Creative Mode has unlimited ammo. Ships do not require to have ammo put into their inventory. The Creative Galaxy Ships circumvent the ammo requirement code and will display Inf on the hud.

Kinetic - used for any Kinetic Type Weapons

Non-Guided Missile- used for any Non-Guided Missile Weapons

Guided Missile - used for Guided Missile Weapons.

Major Map Updates:

By default, Star system names are now highlighted to indicate ownership. Gray systems are unclaimed, other colors correspond to factions as shown by the map legend.

By using the popup list in the lower left, highlighting can be switched to show hostility toward the player. Keep in mind that sectors tend to spawn more ships belonging to the ruling faction.

As factions go to war over territory, icons on the map will give the player general information about the conflict. A ! icon next to a Star System’s name will indicate a faction is currently trying to invade it. Within the system, sectors currently under the owner’s control will have a blue flag. Sectors that have been captured will have a red flag, and sectors currently experiencing a battle will be marked with a ! warning icon.

Right click menu: if a system is in conflict, the sectors in the list will have an icon next to them identical to the one above it’s sector object. When mousing over a sector’s button, the sector’s object is highlighted blue. The button for the sector the player is in is colored green. The notes field is player editable, its contents are saved per sector.

Sectors currently under conflict are more likely to spawn factions involved in that conflict.

Buy and sell prices at stations are affected by the player’s standing with the faction that own’s the station, as well as the availability of raw sources (via mining stations) in that sector.

Opening fire on a ship will lower your standings with that ship’s faction. Killing a ship will greatly lower standing from the owner, but will slightly raise standing from the owner’s enemies.

Changed:

Asteroid Spawning: Previously, asteroids were spawned individually and culling operations were carried out on them to reduce impact on performance. To further increase performance while allowing for more interesting asteroid fields, asteroids are now spawned in clusters, and spawn/despawn dynamically to drastically improve both physics and rendering performance. These clusters should still be visible from a distance, but will only have a single radar icon until the player comes closer.

NOTE: Your subsystems have been changed/removed. You need to open the subsystems of your HULL (at least) and verify you have the right

Inventory/Store Main Categories(Subsystems/Ship Parts/Trade Goods) have been switched over to radio buttons. Only one Main Category can be selected at a time.

Weapons (except Energy) require Ammo to be fired. The weapon size will determine how many resources it uses each time it fires. (Size 1 = 1 usage, Size 2=2 usages, etc)

Camera’s Settings: Now should be able to zoom in to an acceptable closeness without too much clipping. Camera is now centered in middle of ship.

Radar Sensor subsystems have been limited to 1 per ship. Their ranges and durability have been adjusted to reflect this.

Massive improvement to performance when asteroids are in the same sector.

Greatly increased base sensor range.

The hull indicator now displays raw value instead of percentage for the player hud and target indicators.

The Warp Effect is scaled by the size of your ship.

Fixed:

Fixed a couple misaligned cubemaps for the skybox generator.

Fixed a bug where Shared Hull Subsystem Capacity was being miscalculated shared hull space will be lowered due to this fact.

Fixed issue where modules would gain space if modified.

The faction standing menu (visible in sector, default key is K) has been fixed.

Fixed a bug that caused some NPC ships to be idle.

Stars will no longer appear to be rendered on top of planets.

Fixed a few minor memory leaks in Sector.

The galaxy and ship name fields no longer accept special characters or punctuation. (Next patch will allow _ or spaces, no other special chars)

Fixed bug in laser damage timing.

Fixed bug in Turret seeming to take to long to engage.

Fixed an bug with the warping system that caused the ship to sometimes overshoot the target.

Fixed a bug where the camera would offset itself.

Fixed a bug where Inventory weight was not being calculated correctly allowing you to remove cargo subsystems after filling cargo hold.

Fixed a bug where you were unable to buy resources other than ammunition.

Scale of stations

Removed rotation on station rings - this was causing huge performance hit.

Clipping distance between near and far camera.

Factions not updating on new galaxy creation.

Recalculated how beam damage is applied, increase in performance.

Fixed an issue where Inventory would not display the correct values in Sector until you cycled thru the main categories.

Known Issues:

Inf displays for all ammo in career mode, however that does not mean that there is ammo available. Purchasing and placing ammo in the ship will result in a # being displayed instead of Inf. (fixed for D11)

C&C Modules do not spawn initially in Career Mode

If you come across any problems, please post it in the Live Build Bug Reports forum, that'll help us keep an eye on anything that is happening. Thanks so much and happy gaming! ~Kaypix

Added Hardpoint/Subsystem Weapons system - Turrets (Hardpoint) and Weapons (subsystems) have been split into two systems. The turret (hardpoint) will have how far the turret can reach in an arch as well as how fast. You then will equip a Weapon (subsystem) to it to dictate what type of weapon it is and what type of damage it will do. Old Weapons(non-hardpoints) will have a “base” value set to them for their damage type. It is advised that all users begin swapping out old turrets for the new hardpoint systems. Older turrets will be phased out as we add more replacement weapon systems.

Ammunition Resources, three types currently. (Only available in the store. Remember to move from Station Inventory to your Ship Inventory after you purchase if from the store. When you purchase items from the store they just go to your Station Storage, not to your Ship Storage)

Kinetic - used for any Kinetic Type Weapons

Non-Guided Missile- used for any Non-Guided Missile Weapons

Guided Missile - used for Guided Missile Weapons.

Creative Mode now has unlimited ammo. Creative Galaxy Ships do not require to have ammo put into their inventory. The Creative Galaxy Ships circumvent the ammo requirement code and will display Inf on the hud.

Major Map updates:

By default, Star system names are now highlighted to indicate ownership. Gray systems are unclaimed, other colors correspond to factions as shown by the map legend.

By using the popup list in the lower left, highlighting can be switched to show hostility toward the player. Keep in mind that sectors tend to spawn more ships belonging to the ruling faction.

As factions go to war over territory, icons on the map will give the player general information about the conflict. A ! icon next to a Star System’s name will indicate a faction is currently trying to invade it. Within the system, sectors currently under the owner’s control will have a blue flag. Sectors that have been captured will have a red flag, and sectors currently experiencing a battle will be marked with a ! warning icon.

Right click menu: if a system is in conflict, the sectors in the list will have an icon next to them identical to the one above it’s sector object. When mousing over a sector’s button, the sector’s object is highlighted blue. The button for the sector the player is in is colored green. The notes field is player editable, its contents are saved per sector.

Sectors currently under conflict are more likely to spawn factions involved in that conflict.

Buy and sell prices at stations are affected by the player’s standing with the faction that own’s the station, as well as the availability of raw sources (via mining stations) in that sector.

Opening fire on a ship will lower your standings with that ship’s faction. Killing a ship will greatly lower standing from the owner, but will slightly raise standing from the owner’s enemies.

Changed

Adjusted all module and subsystem values (This will be ongoing)

NOTE: Your subsystems have been changed/removed. You need to open the subsystems of your HULL (at least) and verify you have the right subsystem volume in your ship, then save your ship again.[/h1][/list]

Asteroid Spawning: Previously, asteroids were spawned individually and culling operations were carried out on them to reduce impact on performance. To further increase performance while allowing for more interesting asteroid fields, asteroids are now spawned in clusters, and spawn/despawn dynamically to drastically improve both physics and rendering performance. These clusters should still be visible from a distance, but will only have a single radar icon until the player comes closer.

A check for power requirements for ships when launching from Shipyard has been implemented.

WARNING! This only applies to player ships being launched from the shipyard. If you build a massive ship that does not meet the power requirements the AI can still use said ship. So if you want the game to have a balance to it make sure all ships meet the power requirements.

A check for Kinetic Field Generator is a requirement to launch ships from shipyard.

The map now renders lines that represent Star System links. In the future, these will be the jump gate routes used to navigate between star systems.

Added a “You Are Here” marker (node) to the map above the Sector the player is currently in.

Changed

Inventory/Store in the Shipyard is accessible in Creative Mode.

Drones now return to the rally point after exceeding their Comm Range.

Drones rally point has be moved to outside the hangar bay that they launch from.

The scaling curves for subsystems have undergone a major change. Values in general will not get so ludicrously high, and larger ships will now be inherently slower than smaller ones, instead of vice versa.

Adjusted many subsystem attributes to bring inline with new scaling curves.

Reduced weapon damages to reflect new Module and Subsystem attribute calculations. may still be too high.

Shields are no longer lowered upon toggling the Newtonian flight mode.

When resetting a ship subsystems will now be dumped into station inventory instead of being destroyed.

Decreased KFG Strength.

Changed all forward thrust values to coincide with the changes to scaling.

Increased durability ratings for all subsystems.

Increased the size of planets by a factor of 5

Updated the all stock ships to fit inline with the changes to stats and intended combat capability.

Fixed

Fixed issue with shield hit effect not fading properly.

Fixed the Galaxy Map Button to actually open the Galaxy Map.

Fixed a serious save system bug: If the player made a new galaxy, and then exited without launching a ship, the sector would fail to load when they did try launch later on.

Fixed a bug where users where unable to launch drones.

Fixed a bug where mining drones lasers would not disappear.

Fixed the pink skybox issue when environmental detail was under Very High.

Fixed a problem with calculating extremely high damage values.

Fixed a crash bug when creating new sectors with 10 factions and 10 systems.

Fixed an inventory reference bug when in Shipyard in creative mode.

Turret traverse speeds are based on the size of the turret, these values were all reversed so large turrets were much faster than small turrets. This has been resolved.

Fixed issue with camera rendering distance and planets.

A long standing memory leak in Shipyard and Sector has been resolved.

A performance issue related to colliders on turrets has been resolved. This should increase performance when shields are down (as that’s the only time individual hull colliders are active).

Added keybind GUI for the Drone Management Window in the options menu.

Added keyboard button bindings for camera rotation under Controls>Flight. By default, these are unbound.

Changed:

Drone AI improvements:

Drones will now actively try to avoid running into ships. They will not always succeed. Take caution when launching and recovering drones.

Drones will now aim much more effectively. They should now be quite useful in combat.

Mining Drones automatically dock once inventory is full.

Mining Drones will only be able to mine asteroids, not able to attack other ships.

Attack Drones will only be able to attack other ships and not mine asteroids.

Improved lighting in sector space.

Drone ejection from ship has been reduced in speed.

The Warp To functionality in Sector now takes the bounding box of the destination object into consideration. This means that if an object is extremely large, like a space station, the size of the space station will add to the buffer that Warp uses, so the player won’t exit warp colliding with the station.
Improved visual effect for kinetic weapons

All projectiles have doubled velocity

Damage values of all weapons have been tweaked.

Armor plate durability has been tweaked.

Resistances are now active, percentage based with diminishing returns.

Kinetic weapons are still the only weapon type in game for now.

Kinetic Field Generator strength have been tweaked.

Larger tier weapons now have increased firing range.

Galaxy Generation changes

Your current galaxies are not compatible and should be deleted.

Previously, Each sector represented an entire solar system. This has been changed so that each sector is a part of a solar system that will contain areas of interest. Generation is capped to 50 solar systems, but each solar system will have multiple sectors, so the maximum allowed number of sectors is about the same as before. This change should allow us to make each sector more dense with content.

The Galaxy map has been completely revamped. WASD or dragging with left click will pan the map. Scroll wheel will zoom and holding right click will rotate. Right click on a star system to a list of its sectors. Click on one of the sectors in the list to warp there. Note that the game is paused while the map is open. This is only a first pass and the map will change greatly over the next few patches.

Star system names are randomly chosen from a txt file in the Streaming Assets folder.

Changed all sizes of Engine Trails and other visual attributes of Engine Trails

Fixed:

Fixed a bug that caused collision damage to pass through shields.

Fixed a bug with turret aiming that caused turrets to not fire when calculated lead point was too far from the target. Beware, AI should be far more deadly.

Patch D9 will begin development today and will begin being available for our Beta Test Group once we have made changes. If you're interested in joining our Beta Test Group, check out the Beta Notes sub forum. If you run into errors, graphic glitches etc, please post them to our Live Build D8 Bug Reports Thread.

Added keybind GUI for the Drone Management Window in the options menu.

Added keyboard button bindings for camera rotation under Controls>Flight. By default, these are unbound.

Changed:

Drone AI improvements:

Drones will now actively try to avoid running into ships. They will not always succeed. Take caution when launching and recovering drones.

Drones will now aim much more effectively. They should now be quite useful in combat.

Mining Drones automatically dock once inventory is full.

Mining Drones will only be able to mine asteroids, not able to attack other ships.

Attack Drones will only be able to attack other ships and not mine asteroids.

Improved lighting in sector space.

Drone ejection from ship has been reduced in speed.

The Warp To functionality in Sector now takes the bounding box of the destination object into consideration. This means that if an object is extremely large, like a space station, the size of the space station will add to the buffer that Warp uses, so the player won’t exit warp colliding with the station.
Improved visual effect for kinetic weapons

All projectiles have doubled velocity

Damage values of all weapons have been tweaked.

Armor plate durability has been tweaked.

Resistances are now active, percentage based with diminishing returns.

Kinetic weapons are still the only weapon type in game for now.

Kinetic Field Generator strength have been tweaked.

Larger tier weapons now have increased firing range.

Galaxy Generation changes

Your current galaxies are not compatible and should be deleted.

Previously, Each sector represented an entire solar system. This has been changed so that each sector is a part of a solar system that will contain areas of interest. Generation is capped to 50 solar systems, but each solar system will have multiple sectors, so the maximum allowed number of sectors is about the same as before. This change should allow us to make each sector more dense with content.

The Galaxy map has been completely revamped. WASD or dragging with left click will pan the map. Scroll wheel will zoom and holding right click will rotate. Right click on a star system to a list of its sectors. Click on one of the sectors in the list to warp there. Note that the game is paused while the map is open. This is only a first pass and the map will change greatly over the next few patches.

Star system names are randomly chosen from a txt file in the Streaming Assets folder.

All engines now have new trail effects for all sizes.

Fixed:

Fixed a bug that caused collision damage to pass through shields.

Fixed a bug with turret aiming that caused turrets to not fire when calculated lead point was too far from the target. Beware, AI should be far more deadly.

The upcoming Patch (D9) will begin development today and once we have changes made will be made available to our Beta Test Group. If you are interested in joining the Beta Testers, visit our Beta Notes Sub-Forum. Otherwise, please post any problems relating to this patch you run into here.